Using IT to Unleash the Power of Strategic Improvisation

To lead their company toward success in today’s ever-changing landscape, managers need to know how to rapidly and creatively use their organization’s capabilities to seize opportunities before others do. We term this leadership team capability strategic improvisation. Strategic improvisation, as an alternative to traditional planning for urgent situations, builds on clear and real-time information and communication. After surveying multiple executive respondents in 100 organizations, we found that information technology (IT) capabilities, especially information management capability and IT infrastructure flexibility, facilitate strategic improvisation. These capabilities play different roles depending on the type of IT strategy the organization follows. Other factors, including the organization’s competitive environment and design, affect the development and impact of strategic improvisation. In a rapidly changing business environment, an organization is best served by strategic improvisation when it has an innovative IT strategy, a flexible IT infrastructure, a loose organizational structure and an experimental culture

DISCOVERING NEW ICT-ENABLED MODELS: THE CASE OF GRASSROOTS DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNET ACCESS IN BELARUS

Previous research on information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing countries has documented multiple variations in technology acceptance, use and work practices. While these variations are mainly seen as culturally, historically and contextually based, recent research suggests that these can also occur because because new actors, different from the state, market and international organizations traditionally providing access to the technology, appear. Richard Heeks introduced the notion of grassroots development. Here organizations spring up from within poor communities as a result of ICT-enabled empowerment and appropriation of technology. These grassroots organizations can transform the processes and structures of the digital economy by transforming (frequently through improvisation) those not previously having access to technologies from victims through to consumers innovators. However, there is a lack of solid research in this area. This study aims to answer this challenge through the 15-year history of grassroots development in Minsk, Belarus. Based on interviews and other sources, we focus on work practices underlining how grassroots models were created and developed by people lacking significant financial and organizational resources and in conditions apparently unfavorable for innovation creation

Usability of IT-systems is more than interaction quality - The need of communication and business process criteria

This research builds on the literature on information technology and organizations to suggest an alternative to the current understanding of the production of computer-generated representations of work. This literature sees computer-generated representations of work as automatic outcomes of information technology that managers use to scrutinize employees. We present a ethnography of a desk-based sales unit which suggests that first-line managers can address the tension between the need to enforce prescribed goals and procedures and the need to adapt to and protect employees’ improvisation by forfeiting surveillance and instead use information technology to build a façade of compliance with prescribed goals and procedures. Our results to shed light on the hidden labours behind representations of compliance and place agency in the centre stage of the process of producing computer-generated formal representations of work

The COVID-19 pandemic: resilient organisational response to a low-chance, high-impact event

The global healthcare sector is currently in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a ‘low-chance, high-impact’ event which will require healthcare systems, and the organisations within them, to maintain organisational resilience in order to respond effectively. However, contrary to the instinctive reaction to tighten control, the quality of response depends on healthcare systems’ capacity to loosen control and, subsequently, enhance improvisation. Three factors critical to enhancing an organisation’s capacity for improvisation are highlighted; increasing autonomy, maintaining structure and creating a shared understanding. By drawing on the case of Christchurch Hospital’s response to a major earthquake, this paper demonstrates the vital role that improvisation can play within a clinical setting, when responding to a low-chance, high-impact event. This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ's website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained

Is project management the new management 2.0?

This paper considers the evolving nature of project management (PM) and offers a comparison with the evolving nature of management generally. Specifically, we identify a number of management trends that are drawn from a paper that documents a proposed ‘Management 2.0’ model, and we compare those trends to the way in which PM is maturing to embrace the challenges of modern organizational progress.Some theoretical frameworks are offered that assist in explaining the shift from the historically accepted ‘tools and techniques’ model to a more nuanced and behaviorally driven paradigm that is arguably more appropriate to manage change in today’s flexible and progressive organizations, and which provide a more coherent response, both in PM and traditional management, to McDonald’s forces. In addition, we offer a number of examples to robustly support our assertions, based around the development of innovative products from Apple Inc. In using this metaphor to demonstrate the evolution of project-based work, we link PM with innovation and new product development.

Mitigating risk in computerized bureaucracy

This paper presents an important aspect of the pragmatic dimensions of mitigating the risks that stem from computerized bureaucracy, and thereby, preserving the organizational integrity of a firm. A case study is used to provide valuable insights into the mechanics of such mitigation. The case refers to the problematic implementation and use of a computerized reservation system in a large budget hotel in London, United Kingdom. Following the empirical findings, Ciborra’s notions of bricolage, improvisation and tinkering are examined as practical and useful ways of addressing the downsides of computerized bureaucracy

ROUTINE AS DEVIATION

We draw on evidence scattered across thick descriptions of organizations to outline an alternative model of routine. Instead of defining routine as a process of compliance with prescribed rules and procedures we define it as a process of deviation from the prescribed elements of organizations, resulting from the mutual constitution of repetitive work and improvisation. This view of routine underscores its adaptive nature and suggests that flexibility can be achieved not only by nimble and openly innovative organizations but also by large and organizations engaging in ‘closet’ innovation.

Crisis response, organizational improvisation and the dispassionate communicative genre during the 2003 French heat wave.

Ce papier examine le rôle joué par les technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC lorsque les organisations qui répondent à des crises doivent improviser à l’échelle organisationnelle. La littérature sur le management de la crise et dans le domaine des systèmes d’information ne rend pas compte de toute la complexité du phénomène d’improvisation. Nous proposons donc de mener une étude qualitative rétrospective de la canicule de 2003 en France. En suivant une démarche inductive, nous identifions le genre de communication que nous qualifions de dépassionné, développé par les administratifs autour du fax et de l’email qui a compromis leur participation à l’improvisation organisationnelle.This paper seeks to understand the role played by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in organizational improvisation during crisis response. The crisis management literature and the IS literature do not fully capture the complexity of improvisation and crisis response. Due to the lack of theoretical background in relation to ICT support to crisis improvisation, we conduct a retrospective qualitative analysis of the 2003 French heat wave crisis response. Going back and forth between theory and data, we identify the dispassionate communicative genre, developed by the administrative actors around emails and faxes that hindered their participating in organizational improvisation.Organizational improvisation; communicative genre; crisis response; Improvisation organisationnelle; genre de communication; réponse à la crise;